Whatever Cameron does if he’s elected, he won’t disappoint

By David Beeson

One of the saddest aspects of the Blair years was that they started so well and ended so painfully. Huge numbers of us cheered him into Downing Street in 1997, and for several years he ran a real reforming government which achieved an extraordinary amount: incorporating the declaration of human rights into domestic law, granting devolution to Wales and Scotland, bringing in a Minimum Wage, transforming the NHS.

Then came the Iraq War, the event that above all other will define Blair’s legacy. His words to the Chilcot Inquiry suggest he remains as convinced as ever that he was right; his trembling hand and uncertain posture at the beginning, however, perhaps betrayed a consciousness that his belief isn’t supported by events or shared by the vast majority of the country.

After such a disappointment, it’s a relief to see that David Cameron is doing everything to ensure that nothing like that would happen if he were elected.

He’s getting his disappointment in early.

So we have all that wonderful stuff about standards in public life, perhaps most powerfully expressed in his denunciation of MPs caught up in the expenses scandal. He rightly denounces the power of lobbyists too. So it’s wonderful to see that his former adviser, Andrew McKay, forced to retire from Parliament over the Expenses scandal, is going to join a lobbying organisation.

Meanwhile his campaigns in the marginal constituencies are being funded by Lord Ashcroft. And just what is the noble Lord’s tax status? Is he paying British taxes? Is he a non-dom? No-one’s saying, not Ashcroft himself, not the leader of the party he’s bankrolling.

The message is clear. “If you’re looking for someone who denounces sleaze with all the high-flown rhetoric you could possibly want,” Cameron is telling us, “you need me. Just as long as you don’t want anything actually done about it.”

For many months Cameron thought there were votes in promising major cuts in public spending, so he promised them. An emergency budget within 50 days, his buddy George Osborne told us, followed by massive cuts. But then their poll lead started to slip, so the tune changed. “No swingeing cuts,” we were told. Perhaps only a billion out of the budget in the first year.

Then, it seems to me, Cameron must have had a couple of uncomfortable evenings in a club or two in the more exclusive parts of London.

“Now listen here, young fellow,” I can imagine his eminently private but highly influential dinner guests saying over the brandy and cigars, “this won’t do at all, you know. If you don’t make the cuts, how are you going to reduce our taxes?” So now we’re back to the cuts agenda – but not until 2011.

What a slogan it would make. “Vote for the Tories – not really nasty for at least twelve months.”

At any rate, we’ve seen them flipping and flopping from one position to another, wherever they can see some support to pick up, leaving the clear impression that there’s actually only one thing that they believe in. To misquote The West Wing, they’re in favour of themselves winning the election, and against anyone else winning.

Now I suppose that’s commitment of sorts. And it leaves us in no doubt that if they get into office, they won’t disappoint us: they’re clearly fully able of living down to all the expectations they’re setting.